There's another art piece called the YAL-1, which is a megawatt-class
laser built into a 747 with a 3-5 second pulse time.
After spending $5B on development, and verifying that it can, in fact,
damage missile while in boost phase (not descending phase), but only at
relatively close range, Defense Secretary Gates said that "I don't know
anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program
should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. The reality is that
you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than
the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance
from the launch site to fire.
"So, right now the ABL would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in
order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in
the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be
looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and
$100 million a year to operate. And there's nobody in uniform that I
know who believes that this is a workable concept."
(quotes taken from
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1 )
bonus: the turret looks like the eye of Sauron!
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Airbornelaserturret.jpg
Tomm
On 3/11/11 7:31 AM, Eric Boyd wrote:
> via slashdot, so many of you have probably seen this:
>>http://hackaday.com/2011/03/10/youll-shoot-your-eye-out-with-a-1mw-laser-pulse-pistol/>> It's incredible. It's basically a blaster, like Han Solo has in Star
> Wars. This guy is totally right when he says you should never fire it
> without laser eye protection though - this thing would blind for sure,
> even specular reflections of specular reflections would have enough
> power to blind...
>> The most interesting thing? He claims in the youtube comments that it
> costs about $1000 to make one, plus 70 hours of time. That's scary.
> The required laser safety glasses cost nearly that much themselves! I
> wonder what the expected lifetime of the laser is, presumably he's
> massively overpowering it for those 100ns...
>> Eric
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